Should kids have homework?

I was so saddened recently to hear that Tricky will be having homework set this year.

In year one.

I don't mean sharing a book with parents and siblings before bed - which has been shown to have a clear correlation to increased developmental outcomes, both emotional and academic - but worksheets and the like - which research shows has no academic benefit, particularly for children in lower primary school.

I keep being told that I should start preparing my child for highschool because he'll have lots of homework then. The kid hasn't even lost his first tooth yet and homework policy at schools around the country is dictating that he should be starting to knuckle down and get in the habit for something that won't be starting for another six years. Can he not just be a child for a while? Is the six hours at school a day not enough?

My argument was shot down recently by someone who used the old "failing to prepare is preparing to fail" argument and said by opting out of homework for my five year old I was disadvantaging him by not preparing him for highschool.

Prepare, prepare, prepare. It's all I hear.

Just so we're clear, we are talking about getting FIVE YEAR OLDS ready for highschool? Right. I think that can wait. Some countries, that have far greater average academic performance than Australia, don't even send their kids to school until they are SEVEN! There is plenty of time to teach our children study skills, but the time for them to play and be little is evaporating before our eyes.

Then the second he gets to highschool, if it was anything like my highschool, every day someone will mention preparing for university. What if he doesn't want to go to university? What if he wants to drive trucks, or be a carpenter, or join the circus? I remember my friends and I were at times terrified of not getting a high enough tertiary entrance score because it meant we'd never get in to uni which meant we'd never get a "good job" which meant we'd become homeless and we'd die alone and unhappy. A little extreme, but this is exactly how our teenage brains interpreted the pressure to get a first round uni offer.

I'm not against giving kids the tools they need in life, in fact I'd argue that I'm about giving them more tools, but why are we so fixated on preparing them for only one portion of their lives? Can we not cater to the whole child who will become a whole adult, not just a working robot? Someone who has relationships. A family. Interests. A fucking life!?

In the copious amounts of therapy that I've had (and believe me, it's a lot), I've learned that creating a balance between the big things in your life, the things that make you YOU, is imperative. Not just for the good times, but for the bad times - if your identity is based around one aspect of your life, like your career, and that one thing ceases to exist, well, you can be pretty fucked.

If I am my job, then who am I if my position is made redundant? Am I still worthy? Do I have enough of everything else in life, or has the loss of one sector annihilated my entire sense of self?

I don't want that for me (it was hard enough thinking it in highschool) and I certainly don't want that for my kids. I want them to know that life is more than just test results and careers. It's about love, and passion, and fun, and sadness, and heartache, and spirit, and playfulness, and family, and friends, too.

I don't want my child to come home and do more work.

I want my child to come home and pretend - to prepare his mind for creative thinking.

I want my child to come home and bake - to prepare him to cook when he leaves home.

I want my child to come home and play sport - to prepare his body for a healthy life that isn't just sitting down all day.

I want my child to come home and relax - to prepare him to find a work life balance.

I want my child to come home and be with his family - to prepare him to be with his own family.

I want my child to come home and socialise - to prepare him for all the different relationships he'll have over his lifetime.

So I bring back the saying here, again: To fail to prepare is to prepare to fail. By preparing our children to succeed at only one aspect of their lives... we are preparing them to fail at others.

"Mum, what does motherfucker mean?"

I try reeeaaaalllly hard not to swear in front of my kids. It does happen though, because I'm human. A very sweary, quickly frustrated human who says fuck a lot. But I try really, really hard. 

When talking to friends with any kiddies within earshot I will drop out the swear sounds but still mouth the words or spell it out, but at home I say things like fuuu...dge and other such completely un-fucking-satisfying words.

After 7pm, when my babes are (usually) asleep, all the suppressed curses come bubbling to the surface. Every bloody second fucking word is a shitty swear. See? It's as if my body has a natural quota of swearing that must be completed by the end of the day or I'll turn in to a pumpkin or something.  

I grew up with my Dad making up huge sentences of just swear words when he was angry, but after getting a smack for saying fuck when I was three, I didn't swear again in front of my parents until I was an adult. Now they are subject to my foul mouth as much as anyone else because I figure they taught me, they gotta hear it. 

I used to swear a bit in front of Tricky when he was little, and because he was speech delayed and wouldn't say boo, it went on for quite a while. One day he piped up from the back seat with "bitch" and it put an end to the 24/7 trash talk pretty quickly.

Bobbin, on the other hand, is a parrot. She has been talking our ears off for months; we lost count of her words somewhere around the hundred mark. She will repeat everything she hears. EVERYTHING. Though not always 100% correct, so when she grabs your hand and pulls you to floor and says "sit"... well, yeah. She's constantly telling people to shit and I'm hovering around saying "SHE MEANS SIT!" 

Tricks is very in to words now; how they're spelled and what letters make what sound, and is always quick to ask what different words mean if he hasn't heard them before. It's led to some interesting conversations, "Mum, what does motherfucker mean?", being the one that has stuck in my mind the most (and never got an answer other than the ol' it's not a nice thing to say cop out), but other than that, he's not generally a swearer. Plus he is a bit of a tattle tale when he hears other people swear, and tells me or takes it upon himself to tell them off. "Nanna, that's not a nice word!". 

When you combine these two with a mother who was sleep deprived from looking after sick kiddies all night, the following happens:

Me: *dropping carton of milk * "Fuuuuuck!"

Bobbin: "Fuck!" 

Tricky: "Mum, Bobbin said fuck!!! Bobbin, fuck isn't a nice word, you shouldn't say fuck."

Great. We've all dropped the F bomb in the space of three seconds. 

We have adopted a variant of @emmasbrain's rules of swearing with him. Our rule is he can swear in our car, singing along to songs if it just us there. It's worked pretty well and I try to have songs without swear words whenever possible, but he is really in to anything Macklemore ("I rock that motherfucker") and his favourite song is Uptown Funk right now ("I'm too hot, hot damn!"). Though damn isn't really a swear word, it still sounds a bit wrong coming out of his mouth, so I count it as one now.  

I put the call out on Facebook for sweary stories and laughed my ass off last night reading them all. Here are some of my faves:

So my kids are not the only ones who swear sometimes. PHEW. And 60% of my readers are called Emma. Wait, what?

Tell me your sweary stories!